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Saturday, 23 April 2011

Keep online surveys & forms short as possible

There are always exceptions with particular audiences and scenarios, but the general rule seems to be the longer your form or survey, the less likely people are to complete it. And if they do they spend less time thinking about later questions.

An interesting bit of research by survey monkey looks at the average length of time survey participants spend on each page of a survey. The later in the survey, the less time spent considering the questions.

This ties in with form usability expert Caroline Jarrett's advice about keeping forms as short as possible and not asking unnecessary questions. Also the case study where altering a single field saved a company $12m.